Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Our one-month mark of island life came and went so quickly I barely realized it. I can't believe we've been here for a month already - it still feels like a vacation despite the fact that we're both fully immersed in work. While we've settled into work life, we are unfortunately still unsettled in home life, meaning we are still living in a hotel. We have been told that we can move into our house at the beginning of next month, so we are excitedly counting down the days. By the time we are able to move in and have our household good delivered, we will have been living in hotels for 7 months, and 5 of those were mandatory. I'll just say that is far too long to be living out of boxes and suitcases.

Thus, my quest for making real food in a hotel room continues, but I thankfully have a crock pot at the very least now. When I was living the bachelorette life, salads and soup were really easy fixes when there was no time (or let's be real, motivation) for cooking. But my husband isn't playing that game, and I'm always looking for something meaty to make so he's not looking for snacks two hours after dinner. Last night I made red wine beef tips over brown rice, and it was really delicious. Downside: our tiny hotel room still smells like onion? We had this with a side of steamed broccoli, and there were lots of leftovers!

2 pounds of stew meat

1 medium shallot, thinly diced

5 cloves garlic, thinly diced

salt and pepper

1 tsp herbes de provence

10 oz. red wine, or as I prefer to not waste good wine, red cooking wine

Put the meat in the slow cooker and top it with shallot, garlic, salt, pepper, and herbes de provence. Pour the red wine over it and cook it on high for 4 hours or low for 8. We ate it over some brown rice, which I made in the Pasta Boat in the microwave. Super easy, hotel room friendly, and definitely delicious!